Learning Needs a Joyful Reason

I just started learning Italian on Duolingo. Because I’ve already studied French and Spanish (I would not go so far as to say I’ve learned them) I have something of a leg up: Italian doesn’t seem terribly different in many ways from those other two Romance languages, and I know enough about language learning to notice where my weak spots are and work on them (prepositions, how I hate thee). I’m slugging away. I not only like the language, I’m enjoying the process of learning it. My goal is to learn enough to be able to embarrass myself if/when I go to Italy. I wrote an entire book set in Italy; it seems to me I should go and see it for myself. So I’ve got a reason. That helps.

But not all reasons are helpful. Because I’m contemplating self-publishing some of my backlist, I was counseled that I should work on promotion: viz, a newsletter. Which has led me to learning of the sort that makes me want to lie down and howl. I researched newsletter management software–the stuff that will keep your mailing list and provide templates for newsletters. Based on cost, the size of my current mailing list, and various reviews, I signed up for a trial of one. I’ve done newsletters before at the museum where I worked. I was not fearful.

Silly me.

Let’s dive right in, right? I click the button labeled “CREATE YOUR NEWSLETTER.” Before you can design a template or write anything, you have to make the underpinnings of the program talk to the underpinnings of your website.  I created my website more than a decade ago, my recollection of the process is fuzzy at best, and I don’t go wandering the basement looking at the wiring for fun, because I just don’t. But I dig in. Shortly I find myself mired in the sort of technical backstage stuff in which I have no training, outdated information, and zero interest. 

After two hours of trying to fix the SPF and DKIM on my website so that the newsletter manager will accept it as a “sender”–each time coming up with a new and different way to not quite do it, and each time being terrified I would break my perfectly functional website–I gave up, cancelled my trial, and tried not to throw a tantrum.

Today, filled with renewed optimism (who am I kidding?) I will seek out a different newsletter manager and see what I can make of it. But there is nothing about this kind of learning that gives me joy. The best I can expect (aside from a working newsletter) is a kind of bitter triumph of the HAH! TAKE THAT variety. 

Part of the problem is simply that this is a kind of learning that doesn’t come easy for me. And an equal part is that my reason for doing it is of the hold-your-nose-and-just-do-it variety which provides no joy. When I think of  learning Italian, I think of wandering in a city I don’t know, asking directions, having adventures, ordering food and drink and making fun of how dreadful my Italian is, but trying anyway. It’s a joyful imagining. That’s my payoff.

The payoff for figuring out newsletter software is (theoretically anyway) being able to create a newsletter* and send it out with relative ease. That’s it. I appreciate the benefit that will provide. But there’s no joy in the process, and no prospective joy in that benefit, and at this point in my life I suspect I kind of need some joy to grease the wheels and make it easier to persevere.

If y’all will excuse me, I’m going to practice Italian for a while.
__________
*The thought of sending out a newsletter makes me feel rather… squishy? Awkward? Send out regular bulletins about ME! What’s going on with ME! And my work! I have no problem writing ab out what’s going on with me and my work in a “you can read this if you want to” venue like Facebook or Threads, but there, I can just throw something up and people can read it if they want to. When you send a newsletter out you’re assuming that someone will want to see it (yes, I know: you send newsletters to people who have already indicated an interest). It just feels colossally pushy to me. Which may, in fact, be what is required for a self-published author. And yet.

Back in time (again)

Time to delve further into the past. Not a single year, for the end of this series, but a few years. I was writing pretty much fulltime as a public servant until 1998, but everything was published under the names of other people. I was paid, and they were given the rewards for the writing. Such is the life of a policy wonk who can write. I can’t give you any of this writing, and I wouldn’t want to. It was Terribly Important and rather dull, and is all long forgotten. I do find it amusing, however, that I spent a whole decade writing documents that no-one will ever read.

Instead, over the next few weeks, I’ll give you a small number of miscellaneous bits of writing from the 1990s. I’ll be finished my thesis at the end of this sequence and then you may be back to writing from me, now, or I may have to delay a bit longer. This is a consequential year, full of an enormous amount of work. I’m emerging from being rather ill and have paid work and writing (paid and unpaid) and a whole heap of conferences and events: I want to get everything done. The last few months and the next couple of months are an example of how I do this. I juggle.

Now I’m curious – do you juggle? And what challenges did you face in the 1990s?

My Baycon 2024 Schedule

I’ll be at Baycon this year, hooray! This will be my first in-person convention since the pandemic and I’m super excited to see you. Please find me and say hello!

 

 

My preliminary panel schedule with some of my favorite co-panelists (I am told I may be added to other events, like autographing and a reading…stay tuned!)

Writing Beyond Trauma

5 Jul 2024, Friday 10:30 – 11:45, Writer’s Workshop (Santa Clara Marriott)

These are perilous times for many of us. As survivors or the loved ones of survivors, how has our experience affected us as writers? How do our stories transcend and heal? Escape? Educate our audience? Are there times when the pain is so great, the words simply will not come–what do we do when we have lost our voice and how do we use writing to regain it? In this panel, we will strive to listen respectfully and to leave time between each speaker to absorb more deeply what they have said.

Deborah Ross with L.M. Kate, Gregg Castro (Association of Ramaytush Ohlone),  Maya Bohnhoff ,Sumiko Saulson (Iconoclast Productions)

Creating Original Worlds Format: Panel
5 Jul 2024, Friday 14:45 – 16:00, Monterey (Santa Clara Marriott)

When creating environments for speculative genres such as fantasy, science fiction, magical realism or alternate history, what are some essential questions one needs to ask themselves about their world? How can a writer make their worlds as original as possible. We will also discuss how to research, plot, and develop a setting whether you’re creating it out of spare parts or building on an alternate reality.

Deborah Ross, Maya Bohnhoff , Chad Peterman

Beta Readers & Critique Groups5 Jul 2024, Friday 16:15 – 17:30, Sierra (Santa Clara Marriott)

Your story’s done, how do you choose who reads it first? How do you handle feedback from beta readers, writing groups, friends and strangers? How do you know whose advice to take, and how to accept criticism gracefully?

Maya Bohnhoff, Sheryl R Hayes , J.L. (Jim) Doty (Bourgeois Capitalist Establishment), Deborah Ross

 
 
Paying Forward, Backward, and Sideways

6 Jul 2024, Saturday 16:15 – 17:30, Sierra (Santa Clara Marriott)

In the field of speculative fiction, seasoned writers often encourage, mentor, and nurture new and aspiring writers. As those writers come of age, many pass on the gift. Writers at about the same stage in their careers cheer one another on, furnish emotional support, and act as beta readers. Join us for a session of gratitude, hope, and fellowship among writers, both professional and aspiring.

Deborah Ross, Maya Bohnhoff, Cliff Winnig

Women’s History Month from another angle

Another bit of the history of Australian Women’s History Month. This was first published by Trivium Publishing, who also took on my first novel. They were the single biggest component in persuading me that I could write and should write. I never didn’t write, to be honest, I just assumed that my writing was not terribly good and that no-one wanted to read it. I didn’t know enough about the publishing world nor about how very isolated Canberra was back then from all publishing influences. It’s still possible to talk to editors and agents in some part s of the world and be discovered as a writer. In Canberra, this is now possible, but only because a group of us worked very hard from the early 2000s to change things. I find it fascinating that new writers don’t know this history.

I also find is fascinating that, what was difficult to do as a writer (be seen, be useful, change things) was very easy for anyone in the women’s movement from the 1980s until about ten years ago. Living in Canberra and having coffee with friends was sometimes enough to meet the people with who you’d change the world. Women’s History Month was a case in point. Ten years ago, all this changed and now Women’s History Month is a faded fragment of what it was 20 years ago. Social forces change and people change and those of us involved years ago are exhausted. This is the human tendency to reinvent the wheel plays such an important part in our history, I suspect.

 

I have been asked to write an article about women’s history.

I don’t want to write this article. I don’t want yet another piece of writing on the web by an historian, telling non-historians how to think. I was involved in Women’s History Month from the day it started in Australia until 2004, and I am sick of basic instruction. I want to hear stories; I want to tell stories.

I don’t have a whole story to tell, though. I have been thinking about women’s history and realised that my mind has fragmented my experiences. What I have is a series of half-memories. I am an historian who feels history fading and a writer who can’t tell a tale. It is about time I recorded some of my morsels before they are forgotten and someone invents a glorious past.

The official record states that Women’s History Month was first celebrated in Australia in 2000.

Helen Leonard had planned a launch to end all launches. She had talked the Speaker of the Senate, Margaret Reid, into allowing her and her committee to launch the event in Margaret’s private garden in Parliament House. Very official. Very impressive. The list of acceptances was official and impressive too – Australia must have a real Women’s History Month if it is to be launched in the private garden of the Speaker. The dignitaries were daunting.

I didn’t know about this. All I knew was that I was planning an online educational project on women’s history. To be honest, I didn’t even know about Women’s History Month. I was having a whale of a time obsessing about online teaching techniques and I just wanted to set up a test group to teach some women’s history and some Medieval history using those techniques.

When I obsess about something, I tell everyone, so Helen suffered a dose of bubbling enthusiasm about the possibilities of online teaching Medieval Studies and women’s history for people with no history background. My logic in allowing my enthusiasm to bubble was that it made a change from CEDAW and women’s peak networks. Until then I had kept my historian self fairly clear of my committee self.

The next thing I knew, I was meeting Helen for coffee at Gus’s, a café in central Canberra.

The first Women’s History Month committee meeting in Australia was that coffee. I don’t know if the others knew before they arrived – one day I must ask them. I certainly didn’t know. There is a formal list of the initial committee on Australia’s Women’s History Month somewhere, I believe, but I really don’t know if it actually represents all the people Helen had in mind or had worked with.

The historian in me wants to present you with a clear narrative, telling you every important aspect and giving you crystal interpretations. The writer in me wants to present you with an elegantly articulated truth. And the committee person in me says, “I wish life were that simple.”

I can remember the coffee, every mouthful. We sat outside at a little table that was diminished further by Helen’s overflowing ashtray. I had a cappuccino and took so long to drink it that the last mouthfuls were icy. Lulu Respall-Turner walked out of a radio station where she was interviewing me, late last year and we looked at that table from across the road and asked each other why it was so far in our pasts. Five years is not a long time, but the underlying fabric of life changed when Helen died: that first meeting was aeons ago.

Like that coffee, my images are frozen. I remember thinking, “In the US they had an Act of Congress to create Women’s History Month; in Australia we have a declaration by Helen.”

Of course there was far more to Women’s History Month than a personal declaration and a cup of coffee.

For one thing, there was Margaret Reid and her garden. Now she bears the title Honourable and is retired: her garden has bowed out, even though she hasn’t.

I met her garden before I met her, so it has a very real personality for me. My mind flirted with the greenery as I helped setting up for the launch, and then I became acquainted with her kitchen as I washed the glasses after that launch. These tasks protected me from the dignitaries: I was too shy to tell anyone I was an historian, so I pretended to be the kitchen volunteer.

Until Women’s History Month was launched in that garden and for the full time we celebrated it, all I saw was my computer, and more of my computer. No, that is not true, one afternoon I saw Helen’s computer. It took long hours from all of us to bring that first Women’s History Month in Australia to life.

That afternoon with Helen’s computer is my next image frozen in time, in fact. It must have been a couple of weeks before the launch. I had set up online discussion boards and chat rooms and everyone agreed we would get key women in to discuss their experiences and that we would record what they said and we could archive this for researchers to use. It would be fun. We were totally determined that it would be fun.

Anne Summers and Marilyn Lake were on the committee and did their bit on the program as well, but weren’t a program in and of themselves. I was happy to train people, but we needed More Big Names to grab the general public and in general, we were lacking in people to train. I had emailed Helen and she had emailed me, and we had talked round the committee and explored some possibilities, but we had nothing like a full program.

By this stage it was becoming apparent that the launch was our flagship and that the online program would be the part of women’s history month that would meet all the rest of our goals. The launch would make people aware of women’s history; the online stuff would get women involved, remembering and owning their pasts. Without much ado, my temporary classroom became our main program focus.

That afternoon with Helen’s computer gave us the bulk of our program.

When Helen had said, “Come to my office and we will fix it today” she had been totally serious: I went to Helen’s office. Erica Lewis was there, I think, and helped until meetings overtook her. Wreathed in smoke, drowning in instant coffee, we worked our way through Helen’s black address book.

Soon we had it down to an erratic system. Helen would give me a few names and we would toss about a possible topic, then she would ring or email that short list of friends. Since they were all Great Names, this usually meant her leaving messages. Sometimes she was put straight through and I would hear half-conversations about children and mutual friends and political action before Helen introduced the reason for the call. I was in the background the whole time, which, now I think of it, sums up a lot of my experience over the last five years: Women’s History Month has involved a lot of hidden work.

Eventually Helen had rung everyone and moved onto other things and I had a draft schedule nutted out based heavily on who might ring back and what they were likely to say. Then the phones started ringing. I filed the blanks in on my program sheet: we had our Big Names.

Our first program consisted of a totally terrific array of women. They had all made a huge leap of faith: very few of them had been in a web discussion or chat before, and although we were supported by the Women’s Electoral Lobby (and then by the National Foundation of Australian Women) we were not a formally constituted body with funding and written objectives. We were a group of friends, brought together by Helen, all of whom cared passionately about women and about history.

Now Women’s History Month doesn’t meet at Gus’s. It has a permanent, purpose-designed website. It is supported by the National Library and the National Museum and a host of other institutions. It has a budget. It even has sub-committees. Other women than me do the IT training and support and hidden work. I can go back to being a Medievalist and writer. And I can reminisce pleasantly about that coffee with Helen and where it led.

Making

Cake made in 2001. My technique has improved.

When I was a kid I was at a friend’s house one afternoon when friend’s toddler brother went racing through the room and down the hall with friend’s mother running after him, yelling “Did you make? Did you make?” I looked at my friend. “Toilet training. She wanted to know if he had a BM.”

“Ah,” I said. My friend and I returned to whatever game we’d been playing.

But this morning as I thought out what to do with the day, I remembered my friend’s mother: “Did you make? Did you make?” That’s the question: were you productive today? What did you produce? The family I grew up in was not so concerned with bowel habits, but I did grow up believing firmly that You Are What You Produce.

I’m working on two books and a short story, and not one of them is being obliging. Which is to say, I don’t feel comfortable that I know where any of them are going, and that lack of focus is making it hard for me to engage. Writing, when I”m into it, should have at least an edge of fun–if not fun right now, then the promise of fun down the line. There should be anticipation: “Ooh, if I set this up now, later I can do THIS. And That! And THIS!” Right now I’m lacking that sense of anticipation.

Thus I find myself making other things, in order to live up to my You Are What You Produce programming. There are things that I need, or want, to do: I’m working on learning Italian, which isn’t something with a finished object to be held aloft for admiration, but is still an accomplishment of sorts. There are also the approximately 1,624 chores that need doing: cleaning out the closets, organizing the filing cabinets, putting things away so that they’re, um, away. But those are chores, there’s no output at the end of it (rather the opposite: at the end there should be less rather than more).

But cakes and frosting flowers and bread and beaded necklaces? I do them because I like the process, and improving the process (I just found a photo of a cake I decorated when my kid was in kindergarten, 23 years ago; I’ve gotten better) and because at the end of the day I’ve made something. Because I’m not getting that I was Productive rush from my writing, I have to get it from somewhere else. From the manipulation of stuff to make stuff.

Still, on my To Do list every day is time putting words on the page. Just because I’m not feeling it right now doesn’t mean that I won’t feel it ever. This is not my first time around the Maker’s block. In my experience some word or scene or idea will make my brain go *PLINK* and I’ll be in the zone again. So I keep writing, even when I’m writing in circles. And I make cake and bracelets to take the pressure off the words.

It’s a weird system, but it works. 

 

Richard III

Another of the unpublished pieces. I found second homes for many of them, eventually, so only a handful remain unseen.

Certain moments of history are forged into our brains.

The memory of Richard III has been given to us by Shakespeare:  the warped king. It has been left to us by Millais in his pitiful painting of the Princes in the Tower:  the murderous uncle. These judgements have been contested strongly by Richard’s supporters, who see him as a good man. However he is judged and however he is remembered, he was a human being. And all human beings have happy moments in their lives.

One moment of joy we do have for Richard, saved despite the loss of records over time, despite the fact that the Tudors hated him, saved despite the fact that in the fifteenth century less was written down that we would write today. We have a menu.

We know what was served to Richard the day he was crowned king.

So let us surreptitiously reach back to a moment when Richard was new to his throne, his nephews were very alive, and all was well with the world. Even Richard’s worst enemies were given roles of dignity and worth.

The banquet was formal and glorious: the food did not stand alone. There was panoply and display and glory. The King’s Champion would have paid a dramatic visit, for instance. The doors of Westminster flung wide open to admit him and his small procession. The Champion was a-horseback and beautifully armed. He threw down his gauntlet to announce his challenge. The food would have been spiced with moments such as this.

The menu itself was sumptuous. Three courses for Richard, two for his nobles dining elsewhere and one course for everyone else. There were too many people to fit into the Great Hall, and the celebrations spilled over into its surrounds. It took a lot of food to serve 1200 people. In fact, it took 30 bulls 12 fatted pigs, 6 boars, 140 sheep, 400 lampreys, 350 pikes, 100 trout and so on. The cooks dealt with 2200 chickens (of various types), 1,000 geese, and 800 rabbits. The luxury food was less excessive, with only forty eight peacocks.

The first course was full of fowl, from pheasant and cygnet to crane and capon. There was some meat (beef and mutton, for instance) and a little fish. Any of these might have had sauces for dipping, and these sauces could have been anything from sharp orange to a condiment made from sweet currants. For those who liked gentler foods, there was a custard (although we do not know if it was sweet or savoury) and a thick soup. Crunchy battered fritters provided a sharp contrast in texture.

The second course also featured roast meat. Roast meat is still for many people the food of celebration, and the number and generosity of the meats at Richard’s banquet shows that it was a very special occasion indeed. Not all the meats in the second course were roasts, however. A delectable cold savoury jelly done up with a “device”(maybe a boar or a crown?) trapped the eye in its quivery midst. A peacock was cooked, and then its feathers were refitted and it was presented as if it were alive. Venison pieces were served stuffed, and fish was baked whole. The third course was similar, but with a few sweet dishes added to the mix. You can imagine the king nibbling at baked quinces or cinnamon custard, eating more of his favourite dishes, and called up his best friends and good servants to taste something delectable from his plate.

When all the flavours became overwhelming and mingled in the mouth, there were always bread and wafers and sweet nibbles.

With each course, a subtlety was served forth. Not just one, but a special one for the king and his companions and another for the nobles. Subtleties were grand displays – sometimes they were to eat, and sometimes they were simply to admire. Sometimes they were a prank, and sometimes they were deadly serious. The menu from Richard’s coronation banquet doesn’t tell us what the subtleties were, so our dreams are left to roam the possibilities. There might have been a castle, or a pastry boar, or a religious scenes spun of fine sugar. Each one of these would have been brought in with some display and served with great panache.

What did the nobles eat for their two courses? Deep pies and elegant pastries, full to the brim with meats in fabulous sauces. Gilded meats, with egg yolk giving a thin, fragrant crust to a roast chicken and turning it to pure gold. The meats were not all the same as those for the King, but they were varied, and the meat dishes were created to tantalise the palate. The cooks served rabbits served, and pike and veal and capons and geese and beef and mutton. Servers brought forth glorious swans and porpoises – certainly not everyday fare.

This food was fragrant and exotic with the spices of the world. English saffron gave dishes a subtle scent and a beautiful golden colour. A darker brown was given by saunders (a type of sandalwood) and alkanet brought out the reds and browns of the rich dishes. Several types of pepper were used, from the hot pepper we use today to the more complex flavours of grains of paradise and long pepper.

Almond would have subtly fragranced many dishes, with almond milk used in sauces and custards and sweets. Almond was not the only ingredient to make dishes rich and tasty – cheese and cream and butter and milk were all used in vast amounts in the kitchen. So were onions and fresh herbs. Each of these flavourings and colours would have been chosen carefully to make the most of the dish, to make it good to look on, to turn it into something both fragrant and delicious. This was, after all, a banquet for a king.

Delicate baskets were bought to serve food in, and strawberries, dates, oranges, figs, pomegranates, lemons and other fruit sat in the kitchen in enormous piles until they were demolished to feed the guests. Honey sweetened dishes, as did green ginger syrup and sugar. Gold leaf was bought to delicately decorate and rosewater to scent. There was so much rosewater bought in for the cooks to use that it would have been inevitable that a maid would spill some by accident. From that moment on an aura of roses would have permeated the kitchen.

Confectionery was made specially, and specialists created wafers for the notables to nibble along with their spiced wine when all the food was finished.

It was a very merry coronation – a great amount of happiness and and even greater amount of drink. There was some spiced wine for after the meal, but here were also nine tuns of table wine. And this is only the wine used for drinking – there was more wine in the food! A very merry occasion indeed, and a sumptuous start to a reign.

Books for Writing

I am at the beginning of writing a book. I’ve done this before, like, multiple times. The beginnings of books are fun. I start out with something–sometimes an opening line, sometimes an opening scene or chapter or (in at least one case) ten chapters, and I keep adding things in and following loose characters down dark alleys and exploring…

Then I realize that if it’s actually a book it will have to go somewhere, and the process of narrowing and aiming and refining begins. And at that point things often grind to a halt. This has happened before; it should be a familiar process. But every time, every. damned. time, I go through something like this, and every damned time I’m flummoxed.

Generally I have some idea of where I’m going. When I’ve described the process before I say that it’s a little like driving over countryside. I have a topographic map at my side, and there are perhaps some places I know I need to hit–his hill, that river, that quaint village over there. And I have an idea–sometimes quite a clear one–of what the destination is. In Point of Honour, for example, I knew that I was pointed toward a scene at the end at which my heroine and the heretofore unsuspected villain of the piece have a showdown. But when I was writing The Stone War I just knew that somehow my hero had to find a way to bring peace to an embattled New York. So… like that. I don’t have specifics, just a direction. Until the specifics reveal themselves.

But at some point that non-specific approach can make me grind to a halt. When I hit a “where is this going anyway” roadblock I have a number of tricks I use to get things moving again. They don’t always work; sometimes it just takes time, and then one day I wake up and start noodling and the block dissolves. Sometimes if I write a scene closer to the end of the book it helps me figure out that destination point (even if I don’t use that scene in the final book). Sometimes I retype the book up to the point where I ground to a halt (there are books where the first 5-10 chapters were retyped several times, to the detriment of my wrists). And sometimes I make a list of books to read that I feel, in some inchoate way, do something I want to be able to do with the book. What that something is is not anything very clear cut. For example, here’s a list I made this morning of books I need to re-read, in no particular order:

  • The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison
  • The War for the Oaks, by Emma Bull
  • I, Claudius, by Robert Graves
  • The Magicians, by Lev Grossman
  • Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, by Beverly Daniel Tatum
  • The Once and Future King, by TH White
  • The People, by Zenna Henderson

Others may occur…as I’m thinking about this, inspirations can spark other inspirations.

Does this give you an idea of what I’m writing about? If I can get this book to behave and decide where it’s going, it will be unlike anything else I’ve written (at least I think so–you don’t always know what your subconscious is throwing into the mix).

If you need me I’ll be in a corner with a pile of books, looking for inscrutable inspiration. And clarity. Ah, clarity.

Imagining History

One of the other ‘joys’ of 2005 was that many publications disappeared. Not as many as in the 1980s, where five stories of mine failed to publish after acceptance because the magazines collapsed, in two cases just before my stories were entering the world (they are all now readable in an anthology, Mountains of the Mind). I thought you might like to see a couple of non-fiction pieces that were accepted and then remained unseen. This week’s is:

Imagining history

History is a cultural artefact. It is easier to collect packaging labels or children’s toys or works of art and to display them as cultural artefacts than to think of history this way. Besides, we tend to think of books and articles about history as something intellectual and thoughtful and different, not as products of a time and place, and definitely not a part of our everyday lives. If you dissect the themes of every single work of history produced in a single decade, you could put them on show as the product of that decade. A decade in our lives. A product of our society. This display would help show how we think and how we feel, where we are coming from and where we think we are going to. Cultural artefacts. Our past. Our imagination. Ourselves on show.

The trouble is doing that distilling. It is hard to distil the common ideas in histories without being sucking into belief in them and worshipping at their shrine. How often have you read something by your favourite historian without quoting an idea or a fact at your next dinner party?

The trouble with cultural artefacts is they not only show who we are when we analyse them, they dictate who we are when we accept them. In other words, when you read a history, you start thinking the way it tells you to, unless you are careful. Some of this is the convincing argument put forward by the author, but some of this is the form of the written history itself. It is a sad fact that our forms of scholarly expression simplify how we imagine history: they help dictate how we think.

We need that scholarly description and analysis of the past. Never deny that. History is terribly, terribly important. The way history is written is hard to change, and indeed, may not need to be changed. Some of it comes from the need for written history to communicate clearly and to teach. Some of it is the need of historians to make a coherent argument and state a case. The writing of history has forms that are understandable and can be analysed and put on show, in our theoretical history display case.

What needs to be added to the writing of history is something within our own minds when we read. We need to think about what else is in the work under question besides facts and interpretations about the past, what is not covered by the driving argument and the scholarly analysis. Every single one of is who enjoys reading history should take a long and serious moment to think about history as a form of literature, about history as a cultural artefact. As a form of literature and as a cultural artefact, books of history embody lots of lovely complexities and that simplicity and elegance can ignore the reality of the cultural content being presented. The world of people’s cultural consciousness is not tidy, or logical. And it is not comfortable to think that what you read might dictate how you think.

How do you stop being dictated to? The terrible confusion of semiotics was trying to stop this happening. Semiotics was about unpacking rhetoric from reality, trying to sort out meanings and intended meanings and finding out what messages people took on board when they read. Deconstruction is a fine ideal. Alas, language got in the way of semiotic aims. Word after words after word was defined and interpreted until it became an impenetrable maze of meanings, only accessible by the experts

So if you want to read a history book and find out what you think about it without being trapped by the thoughts of others, what do you do?

There is a very old-fashioned technique, one that some teachers still teach to lucky students. First you read the history book. Then you start thinking about it. You look for its component parts. You unpack them and analyse them and think about them. Then you read the book or article again, with all this information in mind. It is not just a matter of the author using good sources and sensible interpretations, it is a question of what assumptions the author brings to his or her history. Do they use emotional language? Do they build up an argument so slowly and gently that you miss the stages and are convinced without knowing how you were convinced?

Reading history intelligently is like being a jury and instructing judge in one. It is a messy business.

Some patterns are quite clear and there are a bunch of books out there that can point to them. A classic book about how historians think about history is by EH Carr and there is a new study of how history had changed since his writing. These two together make a good manual for thinking about how historians think about the past. The best tool for thinking, though, is the human brain. Historians are human and have their enthusiasms and their failings. Look for those enthusiasms in their work. Look for their failings. Find out how they argue and why they argue.

When you read a history, you are not just deciphering the past. You are using the past as a way of imagining the present and enriching your life. When you see a busker on the street, you don’t ask an expert whether or not you are capable of judging how good the busker is. When you read a book of history you should be able to think for yourself. It is harder than laughing at a joke or cringing at an off-key chord, but it is also more rewarding.

If you accept the history presented by other people you will have a nice tidy world, with nice tidy opinions. This is the easy way out. The tough way out is exciting, challenging and puts you on the intellectual spot. It also brings history back into all our lives, and enriches all of us. History is not just or the academy, after all, since it is the past of all of us.

A Jewish Heroine of the Renaissance

Back in the 1990s, when themed anthologies were all the rage, I heard about one that was right up my alley and open to submission. Ancient Enchantresses, to be edited by Kathleen M. Massie-Ferch and Martin H. Greenberg for DAW. The editors wanted historical fantasy featuring strong women characters and magic, as is clear from the title. As I cast about for a subject, I found myself more and more – excuse the pun – disenchanted with Western European historical characters. It seemed to me that the women of interest had been portrayed more than frequently enough, and I had little interest in Celtic mythology. When I lamented my lack of inspiration to a friend – not a fantasy writer, but the director of a pre-school at a Jewish community center – she suggested I take a look at Written Out of History: Our Jewish Foremothers, by Sondra Henry and Emily Taitz (3rd ed, Biblio Press, 1988). Posthaste, I ordered a copy of the book and then pored through it. The chapters were short, more summations than in-depth histories. Although quite a few of them piqued my interest, only one suggested a story, that of Dona Gracia Nasi. The section began:

Unlike Benvenida Abrabanel, Beatrice de Luna belonged to a family that had chosen to become Marranos [converts to Catholicism – also known as conversos] so that they could remain in their home in Portugal. They had a successful business and a rich life. Beatrice was born in 1510, thirteen years after the expulsion of all practicing Portuguese Jews. Those remaining in Portugal worked hard to hide any Jewish allegiance from the world…

I devoured the section, all four pages of it, from Beatrice inheriting her husband’s share of an immense commodities business to her flight from one country after another, the Inquisition hot on her heels, to her imprisonment in Venice, her transformation into Dona Gracia Nasi (her childhood Jewish name), to her eventually settling in Turkey. But all this was so abbreviated as to be tantalizing without deep substance.

In the footnotes, however, I discovered that historian Cecil Roth had written an entire book about Gracia, The House of Nasi: Dona Gracia (Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947). Although the book was out of print, I was able to borrow a copy from a local university library. Within those scholarly pages, I discovered a story as dramatic, tragic, and inspiring as anything out of Hollywood or New York.

I could have tried to tell Gracia’s entire story, but that would have meant either another abridged version or an extensive tome. I decided, therefore, to focus on a shorter period of her life: the flight from Antwerp (when Queen Marie of Burgundy, Regent of the Low Countries and sister to Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, schemed to marry off Gracia’s young daughter to one of her courtiers) to Venice. I’d visited Venice briefly during the time I lived in France (1991) and had vivid memories of the shadows under the bridges over the canals, the ancient plazas and towers, and the omnipresence of the sea. I wandered through the original ghetto, Il Ghetto, the old foundry district. I cut out an image from a tourist brochure of a person in the traditional Mardi Gras costume called bauta (including a white mask, tricorne hat, and a black tabarro, a short cloak) and pinned it on my bulletin board, hoping to find a story that would capture the sense of brooding menace. (As an aside, I’m not comfortable with clowns, either.) Armed with image, memory, and scholarly text, I embarked upon the tale.

“Unmasking the Ancient Light” is a tribute to the perseverance of a woman under extraordinary reversals and dangers. Life was perilous for European Jews in the Renaissance, as it had been in centuries earlier. Jews had been expelled from (among others) England (1290), France (1182, 1306, 1321, 1394), Spain (1492), and Portugal (1497). The series of expulsions forced Jewish communities to find safe (or safer) havens, in the Netherlands, Venice, and Islamic countries, such as the Ottoman Empire. They developed international systems of commerce and banking, as well as close familial and community ties. Gracia’s family was no exception. From Spain (“convert, leave, or die!”) they relocated to Portugal, then to Antwerp, and so forth. While in Italy, Gracia dropped the pretense of a converso and began finding ways to support her fellow exiles, whether lending material aid to individuals to becoming a patron of the arts to creating a printing house to publish Jewish texts in Hebrew and also Spanish (the Ferrera Bible) for those unable to read the ancient languages.

The list of Gracia’s accomplishments could easily fill the word count of a piece of short fiction, but I wanted her story to be more than a list of the amazing things she had done. I wanted to capture the spirit of the woman – if not historically accurate, as is always the challenge with fantasy – but one that would speak to the hearts of readers as Gracia had spoken across the centuries to me. I focused, then, on her struggle to survive the political intrigues and animosities of her time while preserving and nourishing the spirit of her people. The magic, as it were. Here I found a second inspiration in various treatments of the feminine aspect of the divine and the equivalence of the Shekhinah, sometime called the Indwelling Spirit, with light, without getting too dogmatic or theological.

As a final note, since I dutifully returned Cecil Roth’s book to the university library, my husband presented me with a copy of The Woman Who Defied Kings: The Life and Times of Dona Gracia Nasi, A Jewish Leader During the Renaissance (Andree Aelion Brooks, Paragon House, 2002). If you want to know more about her, I recommend this highly accessible book (which has a ton of footnotes, for the historians among you).

Elven Grammar

I wrote a series of posts explaining grammar for Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine in 2004 and 2005. They were not actually about Elven Grammar (no surprise there) but about English grammar from a perspective that suited science fiction and fantasy readers. I wrote them as ‘Philologa Majora’. I never finished the series, because there was no longer a need for them. For years afterwards, people who knew who Philologa was asked me about what came next. This is a part of what came next. For the rest, I have only notes. I keep telling myself that the world needs another introduction to grammar, but something always gets in the way…

This did, however, lead to me teaching grammar for years and years to all kinds of writers through the NSW Writers’ Centre.

Now you have the basic pure and perfect grammar. But most languages do not use pure forms in everyday speech. Learn a lovely literary English, and try to use it to buy a pair of shoes. Elvish needs to distinguish between literary forms and everything else. For the sake of brevity this article is even more oversimplified than usual, but we can distinguish between literary language, purely grammatical language, and the language as spoken by different groups in the culture (eg a lawyer as opposed to a brickie as opposed to someone terrifyingly fashionable).

The first step in creating the different styles of language as used on different aspects of a culture is to develop a simple popular dialect, which will contrast straightforwardly with the “educated” version of the language. Mercedes Lackey does this in her novels quite frequently: just two dialects to suggest a host of subtle differences.

To create the popular language your first step is to dump some of your carefully created grammar. Make your users sound a bit slack or informal. If two endings sound very similar and if conflating them won’t cause mass confusion, then conflate them. Have people speak in less than whole sentences. Contract words (“it is” to “it’s”). That sort of thing.

Remember, however, that when Latin got too Popular, it became French and Italian and Spanish. In other words, don’t overcomplicate this step. You want to keep enough links with the original language so that people see it as a debased or popular version of the original language, and not as entirely new language.

The next important step is to clearly distinguish your dialects or users groups by the sort of words they use. The strongest way of doing this is probably to first work out your insults and impoliteness. While this is more social custom (word origins again) than grammar, it is very, very handy as writer’s tool. Placing these insults realistically into your invented language takes a bit of thought. When someone says “You bloody drongo,” it does not mean the same thing as “On quiet reflection, I rather suspect you might be a drongo.” The latter contrasts idioms; it uses the popular with the formal to make a point. The former is insult direct.

Idioms are important. Create idioms that reflect the underlying culture. It might be its culture heroes (“Up there Cazaly”) or it might be its earthy sense of humor (all examples expurgated to meet the needs of a family readership). You don’t need to overload your speech with them. In fact, you do not want to overload your speech with them. Imagine entering a pub in rural Somerset – it is very hard to understand the natives. But by giving your characters just a bit of idiom and just a flavour of the underlying stuff of their dreams and beliefs and daily lives, you can communicate their reality to your readers without jeopardizing understanding. Just as, by having a popular, grammatically different version of the language, you can instantly show how educated the speaker is, or if they are adapting to local ways.